Concert to feature Washburn band and chamber ensembles

Selections include John Williams' salute to Statue of Liberty

Michael Mapp conducts the Washburn University Band at a rehearsal for its portion of a concert, which also will feature four chamber ensembles, at 7:30 p.m. today, April 29, in White Concert Hall, where admission is free.

Michael Mapp conducts the Washburn University Band at a rehearsal for its portion of a concert, which also will feature four chamber ensembles, at 7:30 p.m. today, April 29, in White Concert Hall, where admission is free.

The Washburn University Band, under the direction of Michael Mapp, will open its portion of a concert tonight with the piece Academy- and Grammy Award-winning composer John Williams wrote to celebrate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty.

“Liberty Fanfare” will lead off the second half of a program at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, in White Concert Hall on the Washburn campus. The first half of the concert will feature four chamber ensembles. Admission is free.

The Washburn Percussion Ensemble, which includes Jared Barnes, Kyle Hines, Joshua Horvath, Michael Rice, Samantha Silver, Jeff Swartz and Nico Williams, will open the performance with Gene Koshinki’s “Streamline.” Commissioned by Jeremy Craycraft and the College of St. Scholastica Hand Drum Ensemble, “Streamline” blends together aspects of West African, Cuban, Haitian and Chinese music.

The Honors Woodwind Trio — flutist Rayna Goldsmith, oboist Krystal Harry and clarinetist Meaghan Hartley — will follow with Franz Joseph Haydn’s three-movement Trio No. 1. Then the Washburn Saxophone Quartet I, the members of which are Jared Aspegren, Anna Glover, Andy Rhodes and Guillermo Rodriguez, will play two lively movements of “Quatour pour Saxophones,” written by French brothers Faustin and Maurice Jeanjean, who one saxophonist likened to “the Gilbert and Sullivan of the saxophone world.”

Benjamin Britten’s “Russian Funeral,” the composer’s only work for brass band, will conclude the opening act of tonight’s concert. Performing the work will be the Washburn Brass Ensemble: Andrew Anderson, Joshua Carter, Michael Crook, James Gutierrez, Michael Rice, Peter Ruby,

Greg Scheetz, Colin Scott, Nick Scott, Jon Ward and Nico Williams.

Mapp and the band will take the stage to perform “Liberty Fanfare,” the 1986 work about which the composer said he had “tried to create a group of American airs and tunes of my own invention that I hope will give some sense of the event and the occasion.”

The band then will perform Brian Hogg’s arrangement of “Llwyn Onn” (“The Ash Grove”), a traditional Welsh folk song the tune of which has been used for hymns, including “Let All Things Now Living” and “Sent Forth by God’s Blessings.” W. Francis McBeth’s “Chant and Jubilo,” with its two contrasting movements, will follow.

The concert will conclude with a march, “Brighton Beach,” which American composer William P. Latham wrote in 1954. Written in the British Style in the tradition of Edwrad Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Brighton Beach” was listed among the 100 most popular marches by The Instrumentalist magazine four times between 1960 and 1976.